REMOTE, ROCKY, AND REMARKABLE: JOSEP AMENÓS FELIP’S HAND-CONSTRUCTED “TIRE PARK”

The retaining walls flanking Josep Amenós Felip’s “Mini Museu” (“Mini-museum”) in a village in a remote part of Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, feature images of many different subjects, from the ancient Venus de Milo to the commercial mascot Mr. Clean, an enormous pair of eyes with heavy lashes, a jet airliner, landscapes, and assorted birds and animals. Photo ©2021 Jo Farb Hernández

IN NORTHEASTERN SPAIN, A SELF-TAUGHT SCULPTOR-ARCHITECT HAS CREATED AN OPEN-AIR, ART-FILLED REFUGE

Based in northern California, where she taught art history and ran the campus gallery for many years at San José State University, while also serving as the executive director and curator of SPACES Archives, a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and advocating for artist-built environments on a global scale, Jo Farb Hernández has spent almost five decades researching environments created by visionary self-taught artists.

In particular, over the past 20-plus years, she has concentrated on such site-specific works across Spain’s varied terrain. Her book about this subject, Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments, was published in 2013; now she is working on a new volume that will examine 100 more unique, artist-made places in Spain.

Exclusively for brutjournal, Hernández has invited us to dip into her notebooks, savor her revealing field work, and share her fascinating discoveries. This is the third of her reports based on her original, on-location research.

by Jo Farb Hernández

Josep Amenós Felip (born 1934)
Parc de les Rodes (Tire Park)
Sant Martí de Maldà, in the province of Lleída, in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia, northeastern Spain